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Published: October 14th 2015
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5th/6th October
I love Hoi An. Once you get past the constant offers of tailor-made clothes and bike rentals, it is a picturesque island jam-packed with history, culture, architecture, coffee shops, eateries, two huge beaches, motorbikes (of course), little rivers, rice paddies, epic bakeries, and wide open roads.
We planned to spend that first day taking it easy, but it was not to be. When we got off the bus, and walked away from the taxi touts in order to find out where we were, a lady in a white hat appeared and started asking us incessant questions. When she found out we're from England she exclaimed "lovely jubbilee!" in a strong Vietnamese accent and asked us to visit her sister's tailor shop, Su. After pointing us in the right direction for our hostel, we walked away resolving to do some research on the various tailor shops before we entered one.
This was not to be.
Sat down at breakfast, waiting to check into our room, another white-hat lady with a lazy eye appeared and started the same conversation - even down to the "lovely jubilee!". She said for
us to visit in one hour to her sister's tailor shop, Su, and showed us their Tripadvisor reviews (which were very good to be fair). After standing around for a little while, she drifted away to another restaurant and, feeling uncomfortable, we snuck into our hostel.
The hostel was clean and air conditioned, and the room was spacious with only 6 beds and a set of lockers. The bathroom/wetroom, however, was not great - not dirty at all, but everything was absolutely soaking wet (even the toilet paper!) and about fifty tiny black flies were flitting around. Turns out a general soaking was the inevitable result of washing under a shower with no shower head. Despite my best efforts to at least protect the loo roll, the water managed to wash both me and the entire bathroom. At least it was eco-friendly I suppose!
So, suitably doused and rested, we headed off in search of the beach. The lazy-eye lady accosted us ("you said one hour!"), but we assured her we just wanted to explore for now. It was a long way on foot, but we were blissfully unaware of this fact and followed
the main road for a good 15 minutes (all the roads are generally long and straight here). Suddenly, at a turning, another white-hatted woman appeared on a bicycle and started the whole rigmarole again! We managed to escape pretty quickly and were very polite, so she pointed us in the direction of the beach and rode away. We hoped that this wasn't the path to the many-siblinged Su's shop, and after another 10 minutes or so of walking we gave up trying to find the beach, and instead found an amazing little coffee shop called 9 Grains.
After some exploration and trying to avoid main roads, it was early evening and our only choice to get back to the hostel was to follow the main road. We were close to success, when suddenly the first white-hatted lady appeared on the back of a motorcycle on the road opposite. She waved furiously at us, navigated the traffic on foot, and after assuring us her "sister"'s shop was only around the corner, frog-marched us through residential streets, one market, bought us ponchos from a shop when the evening monsoon began, and twenty sweaty minutes later we were being ushered
into Su's shop! The ladies are very nice, they have some great reviews and customer testimonials, and it seemed that we had no choice whatsoever, so we went along with it. The whole experience was very stressful, and we left feeling worse than we did after the 19 hour bus ride - at least the clothes look good.
We had de-stressing evening in the restaurant next to our hostel, eating yummy food (the Italian chef made lovely pizza for Chris, and I had a local speciality called Cao Lau - pork, crackling and thick wheat noodles with herbs and bean sprouts in the tastiest broth I have ever had), playing cards and chatting with a German girl from our dorm. She was just reaching the end of her travels and was going back home to Munich to start university. It was nice to chat with somebody who had so much advice and experience to share with us, and for us to share our university experiences with. She seemed to have her life pretty much sorted for being only 19 - I don't think I would have coped as well as she has if I'd gone travelling when
I was 19.
We booked on a tour with Heaven and Earth of some the surrounding islands. This was, as is now tradition, a bicycle tour, but with a core difference... I don't feel like I'm going to die every time we turn a corner/go over a bump/go past a motorcycle! Hurrah! The tour was highly enjoyable, even though it was the single most sweaty experience we've ever had in our lives. We started off cycling through some of the quieter streets in the historic Old Town, and took a ferry over the river to a neighbouring island to watch a traditional Vietnamese wooden boat being made.
The boat was quite large and made entirely of Peack wood, which is a hardy lightweight wood found only in Asia. Even the tools and vices were made out of wood, meaning the whole set up was very traditional and self-sustaining (apart from the wood being imported from neighbouring Laos, due to too much deforestation in Vietnam - awkward). The tour guide said that these boats are sold all over the world for around 5000 USD, however the workers see only $1000 as they have to pay taxes, shipping, importing wood and rent for the workshop space - meaning most young people who are expected to carry on the tradition choose better paying work on the main island or in the city. The boats are well-built, and machinery can't yet make them to the same quality as the workmen can, so the tradition is waning more than dying out.
Personally, I think some modernisation is needed. Due to superstition, it is considered bad luck for a woman to touch the boat during construction - she can only do so after it has been built and a man has already touched it. Maybe if superstition wasn't so sexist they would have more young boat-builders willing to take up tradition - but who knows! Another interesting point is that all the boats here have 'eyes' - that is, eyes are painted on to the front in order for it to see where it is going. Apparently a more likely explanation is that the boatmen, who like to spend the evening pickling their livers with rice wine, can work out which end of the boat is which... seems a pretty foolproof system to me!
The next stop was at a mother of pearl workshop, where a man and a woman were sat on the grass working with pieces of wood and shells. They basically flatten and separate the pearlescent undersides of large shells, and then affix them to pieces of wood to make pictures or decorations - the whole process is done completely by hand, and takes an immense amount of skill, time and patience. However, the finished product is well worth it; everything was beautifully put together, and apparently the decorative shellwork never falls off, and cannot be pulled or peeled from its frame. A lot of the wood they use is mahogany too, which looked stunning all polished up. Definitely made my failed attempts at a pencil case in Design Technology look proper naff!
We then cycled through some more countryside, passing by rice paddies, herds of cows lounging on the roadside, and schoolkids coming home for lunch in their little sailor uniforms, furiously waving and shouting "hello!" at us. After learning about basket boats, which are bamboo boats the Vietnamese invented to avoid being taxed on normal boats by the French, we were led off to a river to have a go at paddling one ourselves. Our instructor, a super skinny Vietnamese grandma who's favourite song and knowledge of English came from Gangnam Style, was mischievous, hilarious, and incredibly strong - paddling those boats was proper hard work! She assured everyone that they were either "number one" (whilst making the peace sign with her hand) or "sexy lady", and we all got to wear her pointy hat for photos.
This was definitely the highlight of the tour, and after a hefty lunch, watching a Vietnamese bed mat being woven (again an artform that cannot be replicated by machines) by 90 year old lady and her daughter, and a loud boat ride back to the main island we were suitably sweaty, knackered, and ready for a chilled evening.
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